1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a technique for informing progress of processing being performed by a printing apparatus, which is connected to a network.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, a printing apparatus informs a user of progress of a printing operation via a display of a client personal computer, which requested the printing apparatus to perform the printing operation. By displaying the print progress on the display, user's insecure feelings or nerves, which may be caused when it takes a lot of time to complete the printing operation, are eradicated. The print progress shows, for example, the number of printed pages.
However, special software needs to be installed in the client computer to display the print progress on its display. Especially, when the client computer is connected with a network so as to use a plurality of different types of printing apparatuses, the special software needs to be installed in the client computer for every printing apparatus. Further, when the printing apparatus is replaced with a different type of a printing apparatus or when a new printing apparatus is additionally connected to the client computer, the special software needs to be updated or new software needs to be installed for the new printing apparatus, which is burdensome for the user.
The user might get bored seeing only incrementing page numbers while waiting for completion of the printing operation. In addition, the user cannot confirm how much of the processing of the printing operation has been completed by only looking at the page number unless the user clearly knows a relationship between the contents and the page numbers. It is assumed that, because it takes a lot of time to complete the print job, a user may desire to cancel a print job being currently printed at the point when the user determines that printing of necessary pages has been completed. However, the print progress of the print job is shown only by a page number, so the user cannot determine an appropriate timing for canceling the print job from such print progress information.